January's Book

The 100-Year-Old Man 
who climbed out the window
and disappeared
by Jonas Jonasson

Jan 16, 2014 (3rd Thurs)
8pm at Angela's

Summary:
It all starts on the one-hundredth birthday of Allan Karlsson. Sitting quietly in his room in an old people’s home, he is waiting for the party he-never-wanted-anyway to begin. The Mayor is going to be there. The press is going to be there. But, as it turns out, Allan is not… Slowly but surely Allan climbs out of his bedroom window, into the flowerbed (in his slippers) and makes his getaway. And so begins his picaresque and unlikely journey involving criminals, several murders, a suitcase full of cash, and incompetent police. As his escapades unfold, we learn something of Allan’s earlier life in which – remarkably – he helped to make the atom bomb, became friends with American presidents, Russian tyrants, and Chinese leaders, and was a participant behind the scenes in many key events of the twentieth century. Already a huge bestseller across Europe, The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared is a fun and feel-good book for all ages.

Summary from www.goodreads.com 

Books Read in 2013

1. Christmas Jars by Jason F. Wright AND The Mansion by Henry Van Dyke
2. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
3. Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History by Florence Williams 
4. Divergent by Veronica Roth 
5. Eve and the Choice Made in Eden by Beverly Campbell
6. The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman
7.  Beauty: a retelling of the story of Beauty and the beast by Robin McKinley
8. Possession by A.S. Byatt
9. Three Men in a Boat (to say nothing of the dog) by Jerome K. Jerome
10. Fat Chance Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease by Robert H. Lustig

Last minute change!!!

Breaking News!!!!

This evening's book club will be 

at the home of Emily P.  

If you need her address 

please check Facebook.

See you tonight, Dec. 19th at 8pm

Please help get the word out!!

December's Meeting

White Elephant Gift
(Book) Exchange
New or Used, Any Genre

Dec. 19th (3rd Thurs.)
8pm at Erin's

The month of December has the potential for being crazy and hectic. Instead of meeting to discuss a specific book, we'll be meeting to chat, munch, and enjoy a white elephant (book) gift exchange. The book may be new or used and any genre. Perhaps we can discuss other books we've been reading outside of book club selections. Happy Reading!

November's Book

Fat Chance
Beating the Odds Against
Sugar, Processed Food,
Obesity, and Disease
by Robert H. Lustig MD

Nov. 21 (3rd Thurs)
8pm at Lieschen's

Note from Lieschen:
My book also has a radio interview on NPR if you want to move mine to Nov and people won't have time to read it.  

Click here to go to the NPR radio interview

Summary:
Robert Lustig’s 90-minute YouTube video “Sugar: The Bitter Truth”, has been viewed more than two million times. Now, in this much anticipated book, he documents the science and the politics that has led to the pandemic of chronic disease over the last 30 years.

In the late 1970s when the government mandated we get the fat out of our food, the food industry responded by pouring more sugar in. The result has been a perfect storm, disastrously altering our biochemistry and driving our eating habits out of our control.

To help us lose weight and recover our health, Lustig presents personal strategies to readjust the key hormones that regulate hunger, reward, and stress; and societal strategies to improve the health of the next generation. Compelling, controversial, and completely based in science, Fat Chance debunks the widely held notion to prove “a calorie is NOT a calorie”, and takes that science to its logical conclusion to improve health worldwide. 

Summary from www.goodreads.com

 Click here to visit the library website and reserve your copy.

Robert Lustig’s 90-minute YouTube video “Sugar: The Bitter Truth”

October's Book

Three Men in a Boat
(To Say Nothing of the Dog)
by Jerome K. Jerome

Oct. 17th (3rd Thurs.)
8pm at Stacy's

Summary:
It would be unfair to say that any of the three men were hypochondriacs: it was simply that they suffered from a constant malaise, consisting of every symptom but housemaid's knee. The only cure for it was a revitalizing river trip in an open boat.

Bearing frying pans, elusive toothbrushes, pies, lemonade and whisky, for medicinal purposes only, the three men and Montmorency the dog (whose ambition in life is to get in the way) embark on their hilarious adventures on the Thames. After considerable enjoyment and irritation - getting lost in the maze, arguing with some quarrelsome swans, falling in the river - the three men decide that being out of a boat seems a more inviting alternative.

Despite being over a century old, its sparkling insights into human - and canine - nature ensure that Three Men in a Boat is as fresh and invigorating today as when it was first published.

summary from www.goodreads.com 

Click here to visit the library website and reserve your copy.

 

September's Book

Possession
by A. S. Byatt

Sept. 19th  (3rd Thurs)
8pm at Emily P.'s

Summary:
Winner of England’s Booker Prize and the literary sensation of the year, Possession is an exhilarating novel of wit and romance, at once an intellectual mystery and triumphant love story. It is the tale of a pair of young scholars researching the lives of two Victorian poets. As they uncover their letters, journals, and poems, and track their movements from London to Yorkshire—from spiritualist séances to the fairy-haunted far west of Brittany—what emerges is an extraordinary counterpoint of passions and ideas.

An exhilarating novel of wit and romance, an intellectual mystery, and a triumphant love story. This tale of a pair of young scholars researching the lives of two Victorian poets became a huge bookseller favorite, and then on to national bestellerdom.

summary from www.goodreads.com

Click here to visit the library website and reserve your copy.

August's Book

Beauty
a retelling of the story of Beauty and the beast
by Robin McKinley

Aug. 15th  (3rd Thurs)
8pm at Janeen's

Summary:
A strange imprisonment...

Beauty has never liked her nickname. She is thin and awkward; it is her two sisters who are the beautiful ones. But what she lacks in looks, she can perhaps make up for in courage.

When her father comes home with the tale of an enchanted castle in the forest and the terrible promise he had to make to the Beast who lives there, Beauty knows she must go to the castle, a prisoner of her own free will. Her father protests that he will not let her go, but she answers, "Cannot a Beast be tamed?"

Robin McKinley's beloved telling illuminates the unusual love story of a most unlikely couple, Beauty and the Beast.

summary from www.goodreads.com

Click here to visit the library website and reserve your copy.

July's Book

The Light Between Oceans
by M. L. Stedman

July 25th  (4th Thurs)
8pm at Judy's

Summary:
After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby.

Tom, whose records as a lighthouse keeper are meticulous and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel has taken the tiny baby to her breast. Against Tom’s judgment, they claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world. Their choice has devastated one of them.

M. L. Stedman’s mesmerizing, beautifully written novel seduces us into accommodating Isabel’s decision to keep this “gift from God.” And we are swept into a story about extraordinarily compelling characters seeking to find their North Star in a world where there is no right answer, where justice for one person is another’s tragic loss.

The Light Between Oceans is exquisite and unforgettable, a deeply moving novel.

summary from www.goodreads.com

Click here to visit the library website and reserve your copy.

June's Meeting

This month we'll be doing something a little bit different.  We all have a list of "someday, I'm gonna read the book ____".  Well, this is your chance to toss those book titles into the air and have them land somewhere on the book club calendar.  How great is that? Everyone is encouraged to bring their list of books and join in an evening of friendship, books, and yummy treats.  Angela G. will be our host for the evening and we look forward to seeing everyone there!

If you're looking for an excellent read, this is the place to be ...

Thursday, June 13th 

8pm at Angela's home

May's Book

Eve and the Choice Made in Eden

by Beverly Campbell

May 16th (3rd Thurs.)
8pm at Amber C.'s

It is not available through the library, however, it may be purchased on Amazon or Barnes and Noble or Deseret Book.  Amber also has a copy she is willing to lend out.

Review from Deseret Book:
Is the way that women evaluate their own worth affected still by the biblical story of Mother Eve? Author Beverly Campbell suggests, “In much of the literature and in most of the histories referring to women there is an undercurrent of apology, as though there is something not quite 'all right' about being a woman. In looking for the source of this unease, I came to recognize that it could be traced to accounts of the Creation and to the ever-prevalent and negative characterizations of Eve.”
She writes of three levels from which the story of Eden must be viewed: as historical fact, as a series of symbols and metaphors, and as a place for a beginning our own search for spiritual understanding and relevance in life. This compelling book may change forever your perception of our first parents and the choice they made.

April's Book

Divergent
by Veronica Roth

April 18th (3rd Thurs.)
8pm at Erin's home

Summary:
In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago world, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue--Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is--she can't have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.

During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles alongside her fellow initiates to live out the choice they have made. Together they must undergo extreme physical tests of endurance and intense psychological simulations, some with devastating consequences. As initiation transforms them all, Tris must determine who her friends really are--and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes exasperating boy fits into the life she's chosen. But Tris also has a secret, one she's kept hidden from everyone because she's been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers unrest and growing conflict that threaten to unravel her seemingly perfect society, she also learns that her secret might help her save those she loves . . . or it might destroy her.

summary from www.goodreads.com

Click here to go to the library website 
and reserve your book today

March's Book

Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History
by Florence Williams

March 21st (3rd Thurs.)
8pm at Lieschen's

Summary:
Did you know that breast milk contains substances similar to cannabis? Or that it’s sold on the Internet for 262 times the price of oil? Feted and fetishized, the breast is an evolutionary masterpiece. But in the modern world, the breast is changing. Breasts are getting bigger, arriving earlier, and attracting newfangled chemicals. Increasingly, the odds are stacked against us in the struggle with breast cancer, even among men. What makes breasts so mercurial—and so vulnerable?

In this informative and highly entertaining account, intrepid science reporter Florence Williams sets out to uncover the latest scientific findings from the fields of anthropology, biology, and medicine. Her investigation follows the life cycle of the breast from puberty to pregnancy to menopause, taking her from a plastic surgeon’s office where she learns about the importance of cup size in Texas to the laboratory where she discovers the presence of environmental toxins in her own breast milk. The result is a fascinating exploration of where breasts came from, where they have ended up, and what we can do to save them.

summary from www.goodreads.com

 Click here to go to the library web site

February's Book

North & South
by Elizabeth Gaskell

Feb. 21st (3rd Thurs.)
8pm at Emily P.'s

There's also a BBC miniseries that closely mirrors the novel.  It's available at the library, netflix, and amazon instant video.

Summary:
When her father leaves the Church in a crisis of conscience, Margaret Hale is uprooted from her comfortable home in Hampshire to move with her family to the north of England. Initially repulsed by the ugliness of her new surroundings in the industrial town of Milton, Margaret becomes aware of the poverty and suffering of the local mill workers and develops a passionate sense of social justice. This is intensified by her tempestuous relationship with the mill-owner and self-made man, John Thornton, as their fierce opposition over his treatment of his employees masks a deeper attraction. In North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell skillfully fuses individual feeling with social concern, and in Margaret Hale creates one of the most original heroines of Victorian literature.

summary from www.goodreads.com

Click here to go to the library website

January's Selections

Christmas Jars
by Jason F. Wright

The Mansion
by Henry Van Dyke

Jan. 17th (3rd Thurs.)
8pm at Aimee K.'s

Summary of Christmas Jars:
Where had it come from? Whose money was it? Was I to spend it? Save it? Pass it on to someone more needy? Above all else, why was I chosen? Certainly there were others, countless others, more needy than me...

Her reporter's intuition insisted that a remarkable story was on the verge of the front page.

Newspaper reporter Hope Jensen uncovers the remarkable secret behind the "Christmas Jars", glass jars filled with coins and bills anonymously left for people in need. But along the way, Hope discovers much more than the origin of the jars. When some unexpected news sets off a chain reaction of kindness, Hope's greatest Christmas Eve wish comes true.

summary from www.goodreads.com

Click here to go to the library website

Summary of The Mansion:
THERE was an air of calm and reserved opulence about the Weightman mansion that spoke not of money squandered, but of wealth prudently applied. Standing on a comer of the Avenue no longer fashionable for residence, it looked upon the swelling tide of business with an expression of complacency and half-disdain.

Van Dyke's Christmas story about a mansion that speaks "not of money squandered but of wealth prudently applied" - the companion story to The Other Wise Man.

summary from www.goodreads.com

Click here to read it for free